[DaBear]

"If you have an analogue compressor, perhaps as part of a voice channel, then adding a little compression during recording is a good idea, helping to even out the signal levels and also maintaining a good signal-to-noise ratio by using up more of the available recording headroom more of the time. A compressor can also prevent the singer from overloading the input of your recorder, and this is particularly important with digital recorders which can produce ugly distortion if their A-D converters are clipped. Nevertheless, remember that it's not easy to reverse the effects of overcompression, so err on the side of undercompressing — you can always add more in the mix if you need to.

If you're using a digital recording system then any compression you do during recording should be carried out in the analogue domain in order to get the best out of your A-D converters. Compressing in the digital domain during recording will have no audible benefits over doing this same processing during mix down, so it is probably best left until then."

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